A FORMER police officer accused of swindling benefits for himself and his wife told fraud investigators: "We are not dishonest people."

Vaughan Dodds - who guarded Tony Blair during his service in Durham - is accused of exaggerating or lying about the couple's illnesses.

Mr Dodds and his wife Mandy are said to have wrongly collected £55,000 in Disability Living Allowance, Income Support and Council Tax relief.

A jury has heard how they took a motorcycling course and had numerous holidays when Mrs Dodds suffered from a hypersensitive hearing problem.

The ex-firearms officer said his wife endured the noise on two cruises and on flights to Florida and Egypt for the sake of their children.

"We just tried to live as normal a life as possible," he told Teesside Crown Court yesterday, on day four of his trial for benefit fraud.

He insisted during his evidence that the claims he made for hand-outs were genuine, and that both he and his wife suffered real problems.

Mr Dodds said his ME and depression left him attempting suicide three times, and maintained he was unable to walk far without help.

He told the jury that he often had to persuade his wife - who was also blighted by anxiety and depression - to leave their home to do things.

Undercover video footage of her apparently blow-drying the hair of a customer at a beauty salon was "not what it seemed", Mr Dodds, 45, said.

He said the woman was his wife's mother, she was not working there, and had taken the pensioner along because she cannot do her own hair.

Asked how Mrs Dodds could cope with going to train stations, coffee shops and shopping centres, he said she wore noise-filtering ear plugs.

In official forms filled in for their benefits, Mr Dodds said she could not even stand the sound of toilet roll being ripped or moving in bed.

But he told the jury: "Mandy needs to be pushed to go out for a walk on her own, sometimes . . . it's about quality of life. I push her.

"We had two relaxing cruises, because we try to do things for the children, but she did not cope too well. She spent a lot of time in the cabin."

He described a £4,000 trip to Orlando in 2008 as "a dream holiday idea for the kids" and said it had been paid for by his mother as a treat.

Mr Dodds, of Gardners Place, Langley Moor, Durham, denies 12 charges of making a dishonest representation to obtain benefits, and the trial will resume on Tuesday.

The trial continues.